Little is known that Davao is home to the descendants of a revolutionary hero recognized by the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP). In fact, the city’s first electrician, Salvador M. Francisco, Sr., was the grandson of patriot Higino Prospero Francisco, who was a close friend of the family of Dr. Jose P. Rizal.
To the uninitiated, Higino, a member of a prominent family in Biñan, Laguna, is remembered in history as the man who was offered to keep the original manuscript of the Noli Me Tangere and for hiding Felipe Agoncillo, the first Filipino diplomat, then a wanted man in Taal, Batangas, in his now historic house at 525 Magdalena Street at Binondo, Manila.
The manuscript, however, was returned by Higino to Rizal’s mother knowing its value. After the revolution, the government bought it for a princely sum of P30,000. In the case of Agoncillo, he was a stranger when he was allowed inside the house. Higino did not only shelter him, he also secured his passage on board a Japanese vessel, Heorimi Maru, bound for Yokohama.
According to family lore, Higino, who had issues with his eyesight, was the owner of Biñan’s first hospital. It was through the facility that he met Dr. Rizal, an optometrist who treated him and later became a close family friend.
Higino’s historic house, meanwhile, was among the few places Dr. Jose P. Rizal visited in July 1892 before he was arrested and exiled to Dapitan. Built in the central business district of Manila, the house was occasionally visited by the Rizals, notably the parents of Jose, and was considered a ‘pre-revolutionary underground’ for hiding Filipinos with anti-Spanish causes.
In another display of patriotism, Higino wanted to rescue Dr. Rizal from his custodians but was deterred by the family from carrying out the risky gamble. The plan, though, was leaked to authorities who raided and searched his house, confiscated firearms, jailed him, and sentenced him to death. Fortunately, he was released after the signing of the 1897 proclamation of general pardon issued by the Spanish colonial state after pro-Rizal sentiment started to boil over.
Higino was married to Eduvijes Almeda, the youngest daughter of Jose Carlos Almeda and Bernabela Rubio. The union bore eight children, namely Dalmacio, Paulino, Escolastica, Estefania, Jacinto, Jose, and Lucia. A street in Sampaloc was named in his memory but was later reverted to its original appellation due to a contractual provision. He died in December 1921.
After normalcy returned to the country, one of Higino’s grandson, Salvador Sr., the son of Jose, family tradition says, eloped with Petrona Suaco-Brillo, who studied at the Universidad de Madrid in the 1940s. To spare her from her parent’s ire, they opted to move to a faraway place. Following the government’s invitation to seek settle in Mindanao, then dubbed as the promised land, the couple decided to migrate to Davao.
During the transfer, Salvador brought along distant-relative Ramon Basa, the famous Davao architect, to join the relocation. The Francisco and Basa families, being newcomers in town, settled adjacent to each other along Jose Palma Gil Street.
Petrona’s mom, Micaela, after the death of her spouse Serapio Brillo, a sugar planter, joined the Francisco couple. In Davao, Micaela met lawyer Celestino Chaves, Davao’s fourth civilian governor, and remarried; they owned a house at the junction of Claveria and Palma Gil Streets, and another one, where the Medical Arts Tower of Davao Doctors College now stands.
Micaela, a former dean of Optometry at the Centro Escolar University in Manila, was an optometrist, pharmacist, and chemist before deciding to move to Davao.
Salvador Sr. had six children, namely Michael Jose, a prosecutor in Digos, who also took up interior design in Interior Design School Manila and was a member of Ballet Manila; Rene Vitaliano; Libis Eduvijes F. Piansay, who taught Spanish at Mindanao Colleges (now University of Mindanao); Jose Rico; Salvador Jr.; and Cynthia Roxanne Yuzon. The Chaveses, meanwhile, had a sibling, Petro, who was a Spanish and English professor at UM.
(Some family details were shared by Andrew James F. Yuzon, great great grandson of revolutionary patriot Higino ‘Hino’ Francisco and grandson of Salvador Sr., on 10 September 2020)
